2003 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films

I just got a copy of the local newspaper with the film reviews. These days, I only see these alternative films when I am out of town on business. Anyway, the local critic wrote this, "...it comes to an unfortunately confusing end..."

So I guess, the reaction at my screening to The Man On The Train was not isolated.

~Edwin

Well, I have to admit that the film's ending came out of nowhere - a 5-minute wild conclusion that somehow didn't fit its first 90+ minutes (in style and narrative) and what would have otherwise been a better film for me.

Jonathan Rosenbaum:


For the most part, I agree.

~Edwin

I thought I must be misremembering the ending of The Man on the Train, because I don't recall being confused or disappointed. But I went back and reviewed it with my wife (who always remembers the details of endings better than I do), and I still don't understand the source of the confusion. The ending is thematically consistent with the rest of the film; in fact, you could say that it's the pay-off:


Warning Spoiler! Click to show

M.

Rosenbaum’s comment is not inconsistent with the ending not particularly difficult. I would agree that it did get a bit ‘fancy’, but I take that to be in cinematic terms, not in story-telling terms.

Other than that, Michael has pretty much covered the bases in his spoiler.

I completely agree and 100% with Michael (and Lew) views & reactions on the Man On The Train's (A) ending and what it is all about.

In Atlanta (where we watched this beautiful and very engaging film), everyone applauded when it ended. One of my friends even commented that for sure a mediocre Hollywood remake will be coming very soon.
Warning Spoiler! Click to show

THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST

My feelings for this film is along the same lines as The Man On The Train. It is very similar to another Academy Award nominated film, The Charming Man, in its familiarity with other films and not able to take any chances at all.

One has to wonder why films like these can get an Academy Award nomination but City Of God can't. I did like its deadpan humor, though.

~Edwin

I guess this is a place where we see the film differently, Edwin. I felt that we were well prepared for the conclusion. From almost the very beginning, each man longs for certain things in the other man’s life (or lifestyle). For example the encounter with the two young men in the café, one philosophically observes that a few years before he would not have been treated that way and he goes on to say that it is only in the movies that one man can take on two and win. And then the retired schoolteacher tries to pick a fight with the two younger guys (just as though he were the bank robber as a young man).

For me, the film is filled with that type of preparation. But if it did not work for you, I can well understand why you (or anyone) would dislike the ending.

Or you can dislike the ending as a matter of technique, rather than of narration.


We are in complete agreement here, though I don’t begrudge the nom to this film. Unless it was at the expense of COG, which I doubt.

I don't know where you got your first quote there Lew, but my last post was for an entirely different film.

~Edwin

:b A copy and paste error Edwin. I have no idea how I did that, but it was some leftover text from another thread. I edited my post above so that it makes a bit more sense, as I was trying to just comment on the build-up to the ending.

Sorry for the confusion.

You know, there are times when I wonder if Edwin adds one extra sentence to his posts to try and get them marked "review" rather than "mini-review" in the index.

AAAAAaaaaaaaaanyway...

The Legend Of Suriyothai (142 Minutes) -

I'm curious to see the Thai cut of this movie, since it is (according to the IMDB) almost 45 minutes longer, and I wonder if some of the things that didn't quite satisfy me in the version I saw Wednesday would be better addressed. Of course, it's very possible the extra running time would make them worse.

For instance, Suriyothai is really not a major character in the film. It opens with a fairly familiar sequence of Princess Suriyothai as a teenager, chafing somewhat at society's rules, attracted to one man but promised to another, and it ends with Queen Suriyothai joining her husband in battle with the Burmese, but in between she's very much a supporting character, and not necessarily the most active one.

The missing footage could have boosted her time... or diluted it. It's a minor complaint, though, because a film's title is somewhat seperate from the film itself. Suriyothai may have been an ill-chosen title in that it leads to false expectations about the film itself, but that's ultimately something an audience can get over.

There is, however, a very definite stiltedness to the beginning of the movie. The movie spans a time period of about 15 years, and the writer/director seems to feel it is very necessary to show every major event in the Thai royal families during that time. To be fair, it is good background, and much of it pays off. It's somewhat tough slogging, though - the writing reminded me of the first 300 pages of a Tom Clancy novel, where he very precisely sets up the story's setting so that the other 600 can be all hell breaking loose. It's a lot to get through, though, and it's dry.

If the writing recalls Clancy set-up, the direction is Sunday-school recitation. The dialogue is oftentimes very formal, as is the delivery. It's not spoken, it's recited. I really started to worry, because this is a movie about Thai history, written and directed by a Thai prince, funded by the Queen. It began to feel like a very education, very well-produced, but deadly dull, vanity project.

And then the first person got it in the neck.

The film had needed a villain, and the King of Burma was too distant, but the High Consort of the First King fit the bill nicely. Mai Charoenpura doesn't overact, but she plays the Bad Girl to a tee. She starts out merely ambitious, and then sees a chance to put her house on the throne and is ruthless in achieving it. Suddenly, things start to happen.

And it's gloriously exciting. Those who insist that a gigantic battle scene realized with CGI can't compare to one that was a logistical nightmare, well, enjoy. A cast of thousand battles it out in three gigantic set-pieces, involving boats, guns, arrows, horses, swords, war elephants... It's great stuff, as energetic as the earlier segments were stolid.

When people talk about epics, they talk about the long running times and the huge sequences, often forgetting that the set-up can be laborious. Suriyothai fits the profile, but it does come out pretty cleanly on the positive side.


May -

Films like May are tricky - you can show what a mentally disturbed character's rationale is, and what influenced them, but that's not quite getting into their heads. That takes a little more, and May falls just short.

Don't lay it on Angela Bettis, though - as May Kennedy, she gives a fantastic performance as a girl who has been socially isolated from a very young age, and is just now really starting to interact with others socially, now that she's got contacts to counteract her lazy eye.

But there's parts missing from her story. We see, in a pair of flashbacks that open the movie, how her mother sheltered May as a child, but there's no reason given for her absense in the present. Writer/director Lucky McKee is meticulous in setting certain things up, but leaves others (like her lack of empathy to grusome injury) unexplained. And, during the film's last act, a whole different side to her personality emerges from nowhere, with a heretofore unseen level of self-confidence.

The other characters aren't ciphers, but they aren't interesting enough to share a scene with May, either. That's a problem, because when May snaps and starts doing horrible things, it's not really horrifying because you've got not perspective on the victims as people. You see them they way May does, and it blunts the film's effectiveness as a horror movie.

I only do that to facilitate easier reading of my comments. Please feel free to classify them however you wish. As it is, I really don't pay much attention to those categories.

~Edwin

I'll join in the line of praises given to Capturing the Friedmans. What a captivating film! The way every event told in the film has more than one version is why most fictional legal dramas are so pathetic, where everything is definitively spelled out and attempting to manipulate the audience into siding with one party. We have interviews that give the story here, but the astonishing thing is that the Friedmans have their own documents of their family.

One slight compliant.

Warning Spoiler! Click to show

I saw the trailer for The Legend Of Suriyothai before Friedmans, and those battle scenes look amazing. For that alone, if it comes near me, I'm seeing it.

Swimming Pool

I'm not sure I can do a detailed review without spoiling the film. Let's just say this is one that you'll want to watch a second time, because everything changes by the end. Charlotte Rampling is extraordinary (arguably even better than in Under the Sand) in her newest collaboration with director Francois Ozon. She's Sarah, a mystery writer who's retired to her publisher's French country home for peace, quiet and inspiration, only to have her life upended by the arrival of the publisher's daughter, Julie, played by Ludivine Sagnier. There ensues what first appears to be a Hitchcockian cocktail of voyeurism, intrigue and violent death, but there's something else at work as well. If you concentrate too much on trying to work out the clues, you may feel at the end (as some critics have expressed) that the whole enterprise doesn't add up to much. In fact, it adds up to much more than the usual mystery thriller, but in a way that changes the story into something else. I don't think it's an accident that the camera keeps picking up an unusual object in Sarah's bedroom -- a 3D jigsaw puzzle of an egg (as in "which came first . . . ?"). What part of the puzzle most deserves your attention, the individual pieces or the shape of the whole?

Given the average age of the male movie-going audience, and its predictable interest in bare flesh, I'm surprised that Focus Features isn't heavily promoting the fact that Ms. Sagnier is topless for much of the film and often completely nude. Julie is aggressively sexual, both with Sarah and with the various one-night stands she brings home. It's to Ms. Sagnier's credit that she always manages to convey a sense of a real person behind the temptress, and it's one of the reasons why her scenes with Ms. Rampling crackle with the tension of buried secrets. ("When someone keeps an entire part of their life to themselves, it's fascinating", Sarah tells her.)

Charles Dance has a small but pivotal role as Sarah's publisher who, once he's bundled Sarah off to France, becomes strangely unreachable. Or is he?

Accomplished filmmaking that leaves you with something to think about. People were talking amongst themselves as we left the theater. Highly recommended.

M.

It takes talented people to create a mess like The Hard Word. The movie starts off as a heist flick, with elements liberally borrowed from The Getaway, but it quickly veers into something else, though exactly what is never clear. The story doesn't move forward so much as sideways, jumping from one quirky episode to another. You know the script's in trouble when the major heist of the film is planned out in detail, and then the plan gets tossed away because, out of nowhere, one of the characters turns out to be both a homicidal maniac and dyslexic (and no, I'm not making this up). It's been said that the movie ends multiple times, but it would be just as accurate to say that it simply keeps restarting. The closing shot could just as easily be the opening shot for another movie.

Still, there are some interesting moments, most of them supplied by Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, both happily reverting to their native accents for capers that take place in Sydney and Melbourne. And you have to admire the bravado of the filmmakers for turning sausage-making into a major plot point.

M.

I finally caught Pavel (Taxi Blues) Longuine's Oligarkh (Tycoon) and was thoroughly entertained. It chronicles the rise and fall of the ultimate "new Russian", a man not so loosely patterned on Yeltsin era oligarch and media magnate Boris Berezhovski.

The film cuts back and forth in time, though in a slightly more linear fashion then the Soderbergh/Tarantino extremes, telling the story of Platon Makovski's (a compelling star turn from Vladimir Mashkov) rise to the top of wealth and power in the corrupt confusion of post soviet Russia.

The casting is uniformly superb -- I can't remember a recent American film with so many actors giving riveting and convincing performances. These are all larger than life characters that come to the fore in uncertain times. Longuine has a very sure hand at capturing the absurdity as well as the humor of post Soviet Russia, and makes an excellent gangster film and detective story to boot.

I have a feeling that to a casual viewer a lot of the stuff in Tycoon will seem exaggerated if not totally over the top -- for those people I have but one piece of advice -- imagine that you are watching a documentary, though maybe one slightly toned down for PBS -- these things not only did happen, but are still happening as of this morning's BBC news.

Ted

There is nothing that is not predictable in Whale Rider, as we follow the coming of age of a new leader of a small Maori tribe in New Zealand’s North Island. The current tribal leader, her grandfather steadfastly and stubbornly refuses to allow her to even participate in assimilating the traditional ways, as he cannot reconcile himself to anyone other than a male becoming the next chief.

The director, Niki Caro takes us perilously close to sentimentality, but manages to stay just barely away from allowing the film to collapse in a heap of self-congratulation and political correctness. And underneath, the clash between traditional, tribal values and Western subversion of those values simmers away, but here too restraint (for the most part) is show by the director.

There are a couple of places that the narrative falters, but this is a film that should be enjoyed by pretty much everyone.

L’AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE

Not much more to add really to what has already been said here. I was going to skip this one due to a busy summer repertoire but I’m glad I didn’t. I found it very funny and quite enjoyable.

(Jason, you referenced the wrong link to your review of this film in your index.)

~Edwin

Ozon's Swimming Pool is entertaining, though I didn't think it was as good as 8 Women or Under The Sand. Part of it may have been expectations, because it is really more of a comedy than the thriller it is billed as. It is funny, extremely at times, but is cluttered with red herrings and an overly obvious and superficial theme. Highly recommended for the gorgeous Ludivine Savignier, often nude, though her acting doesn't impress the way it did in 8 Women (but then who cares? ).

The Eye is a disappointing HK horror movie that is very light on the horror involving a woman who has a cornea transplant and can now see people as they are about to die and are led off by a shadowy Death figure. Much of the plot involves the typical ghosty "finishing the dead's unfinished business so they can rest" . To quote Bruce Campbell from The Hudsucker Proxy - "That gag's got whiskers on it!" . Everybody's trying hard but it sure doesn't amount to much. Skip it or if you must, just rent in preparation for the inevitable American remake (Tom Cruise already purchased the rights).

I too was underwhelmed by The Eye. Reviews had made it sound much more involving than the experience of watching it turned out to be. With a good screenwriter and the right director, a remake might actually turn out to be an improvement.

M.

Charlotte Sometimes

1/2 out of 4

Saw this film as well as "Swimming Pool" on the same day, and I find myself unexpectedly reflecting more on this quiet, brooding film. The central character of Michael (Michael Idemoto) is played in an extremely subdued manner, but it's somehow just right for the pensive atmosphere of the film. While some viewers might feel that "not much happens", I related to its realistic depiction of isolation and emotional confusion, which often lead to connections with others which are charades of true intimacy.

Swimming Pool

The lines between reality and fiction, actual events and imagination/dreams are blurred in Francois Ozon’s latest pic. In some respects, this looks like last year’s Adaptation and this year’s Identity.

A second viewing is necessary, at least for me, to tie all the pieces together. I am not quite sure whether, in the end, everything holds up. But Ozon has concocted something interesting to make this one worthwhile. So far with his last three films including Under The Sand and 8 Women, I’ve been impressed with how Ozon is able to handle different genres.

Darn, I guess I have to sit through those topless shots of Ludivine Sagnier one more time.

~Edwin

I did not see any listed reviews of Together. Is this one worth seeing? Thanks.

~Edwin

Listing of upcoming films and those currently in circulation updated. According to the Wall Street Journal, this August is a major arthouse/indie film month. Now go out there and watch some.

~Edwin

You're missing Camp, which I'm seeing today, and Buffalo Soldiers, which I saw last week (and recommend). Also Garage Days, which I enjoyed but probably isn't for everyone.

I Capture the Castle and Northfork have had mixed reviews, and they're not on my planned viewing list at the moment, but I'm open to persuasion.

M.

See what happens if you don't post your reviews? Your favorite films don't get noticed. Okay, I'll update my list for all those titles, Michael.

I know there's a lot more out there that I missed. If its not on the list, please let me know. Thanks.

~Edwin

Alright, since there is not an overwhelming recommendation to see Together, I guess I'll just have to skip that one. Probably, the same goes for Jet Lag.

~Edwin

Okay, let's try this again, in stages (don't you hate it when you make a long post with 5 reviews, and then lose it because the server lost your cookie?).

Well, let me try.

Northfork -

The best American movie I've seen all year. Northfork is beautiful, haunting, and sad, and features very good performances from James Woods, Nick Nolte, Mark Polish, and others.

The movie is overtly metaphorical; the town of Northfork, Montana is being destroyed in the name of progress. Within days, a new dam (complete with a builder encased in the concrete he fell into) will begin operation, flooding the town. A group of townspeople is charged with making sure people have left, in exchange for which they will receive a few acres of prime, new lakefront property. We mainly follow one of these teams, Walter O'Brien (Woods) and his son Willis (Polish).

Meanwhile, an orphan considered to sickly to be adopted is being cared for by the local minister (Nick Nolte), and strangers are searching the town for a figure out of folklore known as "the lost angel". The stories intersect in many intriguing ways; I was especially struck by Walter's meeting with the strangers. The movie is a visual treat, as well - though it does use some of an overly-familiar visual template (more on this later) with black suits, sunglasses, and not much color, the compositions are striking, and everything looks more beat-up than sleek.

Coming out of this movie, I couldn't help but think it would require further study. The Polish brothers have crafted something beautiful here, which may stay with an audience member long afterward.

---

I Capture The Castle -

This is a charming little movie, not the masterpiece that Northfork is, but witty, smart, and perceptive about the relationships between the two sets of siblings.

The setting is a little on the cute side - sisters Cassandra (Romola Garai) and Rose (Rose Byrne) live in a dilapitaded castle with their father (who wrote a brilliant novel a dozen years ago but has published nothing since), their stepmother, and a younger brother. Stephen, the castle's handsome young caretaker, doesn't actually live with them, but is practically part of the family.

Just as Rose is ready to run away from the boredom and poverty, two American brothers show up, heirs to the land on which the castle sits. Simon (Henry Thomas) was raised by their sophisticate mother, while Neil (Marc Blucas) grew up with their rancher father. Rose sets her sights on Simon, with Cassie assisting her at first.

This could be a facile comedy of manners or romance, but it's a bit more sophisticated. It's crowded with subplots, but they all work together. Though honest emotionally, it's also very funny, with Marc Blucas's well-meaning bluntness working better than it did on Buffy and the actor playing the younger brother (whose name I couldn't find) stealing every scene he's in - where was he when they were casting Harry Potter? The clashing of cultures when the naive sisters encounter the brothers (and, later, the city) are both funny and sad - seeing them get off the train and realize that their best clothes are ten years out of date is a great visual.

Overall, a fairly entertaining movie, which I'd easily recommend, especially if you like period pieces.

---

Garage Days -

I originally had this a partial-star lower, due to absorbing some bad reviews and also having very high expectations for "Alex Proyas's next movie". I loved Dark City and like The Crow quite a bit; and after expecting genius, I only got pretty good.

Still, it is pretty good. Proyas, partially responsible for popularizing the dark, slick, noirish look that The Matrix is probably most associated with, makes a break from it here. Garage Days is colorful, and often energetic in the ways Proyas's previous movies were controlled. It's gleefully anarchic at times, especially the two "Fun With Drugs" sections.

The big issue is that the characters at the center of this movie about a Syndey garage band are fairly generic, but they get more entertaining the further you get from that center. Singer Freddy (Kick Gurry, a sort of Australian Ryan Reynolds), guitarist Joe (Brett Stiller), and his girlfriend Kate (Maya Strange) are nice enough, but not as colorful as the next tier out - bass player Tanya (Pia Miranda), Drummer "Lucy" (Chris Sadrinna), and roadie/manager Bruno (Russell Dykstra). And the smaller supporting characters are oftentimes hilarious, especially Joe's middle-aged former rocker dad, Kevin (Andy Anderson). I liked Freddy and Kate, but their dramatic arc isn't terribly new, and they're just not as funny as everyone else.

It is more than fitfully amusing, though, and Proyas has enough visual style to make watching it entertaining even when the story stuff isn't quite up to snuff.

---

Lilja 4-Ever - ½

I like Lilja. Through most of the movie, even though her family, friends, and everyone else around her uses her badly and then discards her, this sort-of-pretty teenager comes across as a survivor. She even takes in Wolodya, a young boy with even less than she does.

Lilja doesn't quite start out with nothing - she and her mother appear to be what passes for middle class in the former Soviet Union, with decent clothes and a small, but clean, apartment. But soon, her mother and her boyfriend have left for America, her best friend Natasha has saddled her with a whore's reputation, and her aunt has put her into a tiny, dirty one-room apartment. She doesn't quite rise above that - she does, indeed, wind up selling herself - but she manages to hold back misery. Eventually, she meets a nice boy who offers to help her get a job in Sweden.

That's when this becomes a horror movie. Not the supernatural, slashing kind, but something worse. Before, Lilja had at least had some control of her life. If she had sex for money, she at least was able to choose the man and make sure that she and Wolodya benefitted from it. In the last act, Lilja doesn't even have that, and what happens crushes her, and should horrify the audience.

Oksana Akinshina is quite good in the title role, as is Artyom Bogucharsky as Wolodya. Writer/director Lukas Moodysson doesn't pull his punches, yet even still, I wasn't quite convinced by the ending:

Warning Spoiler! Click to show

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Swimming Pool - ¾

This movie's a partial star lower if Ludivine Sagnier spends it fully clothed. I'm not going to apologize for that - I'm a healthy, unattached heterosexual man and shouldn't have to. But if that's the main thing the movie's got going for it...

It's not like the movie's bad, per se, it just relies too much on the shock value of the ending, that it requires the audience to re-evaluate the rest of the movie. It's a trick, but not a bad one.

Except... I knew something was coming. As soon as the movie gets into the thriller plot that was emphasized in the trailers, it becomes stilted and artificial, to the extent that I knew the film was going to go meta, though not necessarily to that extent. It's too bad, because watching Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) and Julie (Sagnier) get to know each other was much more entertaining.

It's not a bad movie, but like the director's 8 Women, I didn't really feel like the movie is as clever or good as its reputation.

Oh good, you're back. Now about that index . . .

M.

The index is up next. And sometime this week I'll have a report on a movie that's really foreign and alternate.

Bear with me here, I'll get to the review...

So, last week I'm one of three people seeing Royal Warriors at the Allston Cinema Underground's "Wednesday Night Ass-Kickings". I mention this because otherwise I wouldn't know Koi... Mil Gaya existed, although once I was near the Allston Cinema 2, it would be tough to miss - there were posters all over the place, above and beyond how busy that lobby usually is. Being the nerd I am, I locked onto the image with a spaceship on it, and made a mental note to check the internet when I got home to see if Allston "Bombay" Cinema's site made any mention of English subtitles. At that point, I allowed myself to say "Bollywood musical romance with flying saucers... I am so there!"

Koi... Mil Gaya - ½

There's a kind of innocence to Koi... Mil Gaya (the title wasn't translated, but when it occurs in a musical number, it is subtitled as "I've Found Someone"). There are three or four musical numbers, some really goofy bits of comic relief, and some almost painfully earnest speechifying. And the romantic plot is amazingly chaste; even the lead's nasty rival for the girl's affection doesn't even leer. It holds together all right, though - even when it's silly, it's lovably silly. And despite being three hours with an intermission (and some obvious padding), it doesn't drag.

The plot is pretty simple, though the story is somewhat convoluted. In a prologue, Sanjay Mehra (writer/director/producer Rakesh Roshan), a Hindi space scientist in Canada, constructs a device that translates the Hindu word "Aum" into harmonics to use in a sort of homebrew SETI program during the 1980s. When he apparently makes contact, though, he's not believed. On the way home, though, a light appears on the sky, distracting Sanjay, and he crashes the car, dying instantly. His wife Sonia (Rekha) is thrown clear, but their unborn child is injured, and will grow up developmentally disabled.

Eighteen years later, that son, Rohit (Hrithik Roshan, son of the director) is still in the equivelent of the 5th grade, being bullied by the son of the local magistrate, an athletic hero who used to be his classmate, Raj. When Nisha (Preity Zinta), an old family friend of Raj's family comes to town, she and Rohit initially get off on the wrong foot, but when she finds out he has the mind of a child, she tries to make amends. Eventually, while Nisha is teaching him computers, he pulls his father's old machine out, and sends out a signal...

There are some very good scenes in this movie. When the alien spaceship first appears in India, it's a really incredible sight. Similarly, there's a nifty, suspenseful moment just before the intermission as Rohit becomes aware that there's someone or something watching him. The action scenes are also well-done, even if they are an almost 180-degree turn from the rest of the movie.

Which is, basically, a cross between E.T. and "Flowers For Algernon", with some goofy, kid-friendly comedy thrown in. A good chunk of the second half is taken up by a basketball game between Raj's Champions and Rohit and his elementry-school buddies (with the lovable alien assisting), for instance. And the scene were the alien Jadu escapes... Well, it's hilariously absurd.

I've read that technically, this movie is a major step forward for Indian film. And it's not bad; the CGI work is decent, and the animatronic alien is fairly expressive, if not terribly mobile. In Hollywood terms, it's about equivelent to good cable/direct-to-video production values. I wasn't terribly impressed with the musical numbers, but I'm not a big fan of those in the best of cases. I've got no no idea whether that's Ms. Zinta's own singing voice (it's much higher and processed-sounding than her speaking voice), but it might just be a part of the genre - the same thing happened to Nicole Kidman's voice in the Bollywood-inspired segment of Moulin Rouge. The music itself sounds thin, too.

Not a bad movie, really, though probably more of an interesting curiosity for an American audience; I saw it because I'll see anything sci-fi-ish and I'd been curious about Bollywood ever since seeing Monsoon Wedding and hearing it referenced a lot over the last few years. That, and going to the Hong Kong shows at the Allston/Bombay Cinema and being curious about the other programming. It's an enjoyable enough family movie, if you've got kids who don't mind reading subtitles for three hours (unless, of course, they speak Hindi).

As to actually seeing it... Ah, there's the rub. It apparently was released simultaneously in India, the UK, and the USA, but in the USA, at least, you'll have to find a place that plays Indian films, or rents Indian videos. And finding them can be tough - Bombay Cinema doesn't even bother advertising in English-language publications here in Boston, and I can't imagine there being anyplace like it in cities much smaller than the Hub. The simultaneous release is interesting, but seems to be SOP with these movies - remember last year, when people were surprised Once Upon A Time In India wasn't eligible for "regular" Oscars, because it had had a US release a year earlier? Same deal, I imagine.